July 19 (Bloomberg) -- “The Rise of Marco Rubio” was the
subject last night at the 701 restaurant, site of a reception
for the new book by Manuel Roig-Franzia.

Tony Podesta, the founder of the Podesta Group, said he
didn’t think Rubio, a junior senator from Florida and rising
Republican star, would make the Romney ticket, but he did offer
this prediction: “He’ll be the chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee someday. I like him.”

Podesta and Jane Oates, an assistant secretary for
Employment and Training, talked about plans for the Democratic
National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. He secured an
apartment just a few blocks from the Time Warner Cable Arena by
swapping it for time in his place in Venice.

While Roig-Franzia signed books, cocktails and bruschette
were passed along with summer vacation stories.

Amy Weiss, a principal with Point Blank Public Affairs LLC
and Peter Kadzik, with Dickstein Shapiro LLP, just returned from
Provence and Sonoma.

“We drank a glass of wine or two,” Kadzik said.

Andrew Light with the Center for American Progress said he
enjoys lazing on a beach reading “Demon Fish,” soon to be in
paperback, by his wife, the Washington Post reporter Juliet
Eilperin.

The two were present for the annual awards ceremony of the
National Alliance to End Homelessness. Wertheimer accepted the
Private Sector Achievement Award as the chairman of Funders
Together to End Homelessness, the only national network for
grant makers funding homeless causes.

The Gates Foundation is among the more than 140 funders, as
is the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which was represented
Tuesday evening by Bill Pitkin, the director of domestic
programs.

Bill Hobson accepted the Nonprofit Sector Achievement Award
as executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center,
a provider of homeless services in Seattle. Mary Ann Borgeson, a
county commissioner in Douglas, Omaha, received the Public
Sector Achievement Award for helping 166 Katrina evacuees to
Nebraska.

The center of attention was Susan G. Baker, wife of former
Secretary of State James Baker. She co-founded the National
Alliance to End Homelessness and serves as its co-chairman.

She beamed in a bright blue dress, welcoming guests like
Stephen Coyle, the chief executive of the AFL-CIO Housing
Investment Trust, and Gary Parsons, the former chairman of
Sirius XM Radio, now chief executive of NextNav LLC.

Taxing ‘Privileged’

Coyle had done some number-crunching and shared some of his
solutions to ending homelessness in America. One was hitting the
“privileged” with higher tax rates to pay for more housing.

The ceremony began with a performance by the Ambassadors of
Praise choral group of N Street Village, a Washington shelter
for women, and featured a reading from Miriam’s Kitchen Studio
Poets.

(Stephanie Green is a writer and photographer for Muse, the
arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. Any opinions
expressed are her own.)

Muse highlights include Jason Harper on autos and Rich
Jaroslovsky on technology.

To contact the writer on this story:
Stephanie Green in Washington at sgreen57@bloomberg.net or on
Twitter @stephlgreen.